Translation Guidelines

The purpose of the guidelines is to complement the ease of Launchpad in submitting suggestions and translations with additional information to ensure the good quality of translations, team communication and a defined workflow to help both new and regular contributors. As such, the guidelines can include both technical and translation process information.

We understand that it might take some time for new translation teams to create guidelines, so while we make it a requirement, we want to give teams enough time to draft theirs. After the first request, the team will be given up to 6 months (an Ubuntu cycle) to provide some guidelines, during which the Ubuntu Translations Coordinators team might contact them. If after this time the team has not provided guidelines, it will be removed from the Ubuntu Translators group, but it will be reassessed and will be included again once the guidelines are ready.

In order to make the process of drafting guidelines much easier, we provide a generic translations guide to help kickstarting a new team's guidelines. Translation teams are free to copy it, modify it, and adapt it to their needs.

Examples

Here are a few examples of some teams' translation guidelines. In addition to the generic translations guide, these can help you as a reference to start your own guide: